Priscilla Aguiniga, left, and Jackie Licona, right, hold up their entry for the cleanest water. Graduate Cal State Fullerton student Kimberly Gibson was conducting a survey for her Masters thesis on Environmental Literacy in Junior High students and utilized the resources of the Fullerton Arboretum during an Earth Week event. (Photo by Michael Kitada, Contributing Photographer)

Students from Ladera Middle School gather around a demo using solar energy to cook. (Photo by Michael Kitada, Contributing Photographer)

By now, 47 years after the first Earth Day, even middle school students know it’s important to save the planet.

But how exactly can they do that?

Kimberly Gibson, a CSUF graduate student in environmental studies, wondered that too. As part of her master’s project, she wanted to find out how students are learning about sustainability (or “saving the planet” in middle school parlance) to develop activities based on next-generation science standards.

“I wanted to connect everyday life with sustainability and what they’re learning in their classes with the outside world,” Gibson said at an interactive exhibit by Cal State Fullerton’s Center for Sustainability. Students from Ladera Vista Junior High School in Fullerton toured several displays set up by undergraduates from an environmental studies/chemistry class that Gibson mentors.

The undergrad student displays focused on water pollution, air pollution and water conservation, while an exhibit on solar cooking was manned by a volunteer from the Sacramento-based nonprofit Solar Cookers International.

“I never knew you could cook that way and that it could get that hot,” said one of the students, who in general thought the displays were “cool” and who also toured the Fullerton Arboretum as part of the field trip.

Gibson aimed to show the middle school students how human activity impacts the environment. She will assess how much such “play learning” boosts their “environmental literacy and comprehension” with an eye to incorporating such methods into new teaching standards for science.

“I want students to be aware what they’re doing day to day,” said Gibson, who has been conducting tutorials with the Ladera Vista students twice a week. They typically say “I can’t drive a car. How do I save the world?” she said. “I’m teaching them these small steps to be greener citizens.”

In the water pollution exhibit, for example, students were confronted with dirty water and given money to “purchase” tools to clean it up. They quickly realized the money didn’t go far. “It teaches that prevention is better than mitigation,” Gibson said. The experiment shows them their actions have a monetary value, she said, and that cleaning up messes costs a lot of money, so they shouldn’t litter or pollute in the first place.

“They learned they need to be more conscious of where they throw their trash,” said CSUF student Ashley Le-on. “Or our water will look like this,” added exhibit partner Eric McConnell as he eyed the muddy basins.

The air pollution exhibit showed how the catalytic converter in cars works to remove polluting particles from exhaust. The Ladera Vista students rubbed balloons against their hair, then held them over a plate of ground black pepper. The pepper jumped to the balloon in the same way particles are attracted to the charged platinum plates in a catalytic converter.

Biochemistry major Keith Walker said the exhibit shows not only that chemical reactions can turn bad things into good and that less driving leads to less pollution but also that problems like air pollution tackled years ago were effectively solved with science.

“They were all in awe when they saw the pepper fly up,” Walker said. “When the kids light up, that’s the best part.”

There was a lot of awe when the students saw how food can be cooked with only the heat of the sun.

Patricia McArdle brought several kinds of solar cookers, which use a lightweight metal screen to concentrate light from the sun onto a pot. One of the solar cookers she brought hit 320 degrees Fahrenheit just from the sun reflecting off aluminum panels shaped into a parabola.

Nonprofits such as Solar Cookers International promote solar cookers in Africa and Asia to allow impoverished people and refugees to cook without electricity, gas or wood. In developing countries, women spend a lot of time collecting and chopping firewood, and often have to venture into dangerous areas to do so. Besides taking advantage of free energy, the solar method reduces smoke, which cuts down on air pollution like that now seen over Southeast Asia as well as respiratory problems among those tending the food.

“Three billion people in the world cook over an open fire every day,” said McArdle, who has cooked with a solar cooker in the snow. The devices she brought to CSUF weighed 5 to 10 pounds and fold up into a carrying case with handles. They can bake – even bread or a whole chicken – and can be used to dry fruits and vegetables to be eaten later.

“Because we have access to electricity or gas, we don’t think of these things,” she said. “For us, it’s sort of a novelty.” Campers, RV owners and boaters use them. But in emergencies, such as the crisis in Syria, they can heat up a can of food or boil water for drinking or for sterilizing tools.

In the event of a natural or man-made disaster in the United States, McArdle points out, we could be without electricity, gas or clean drinking water.

“If everyone in the neighborhood is chopping down trees, that is not going to last very long,” she said.

Among the other Earth Week events at Cal State Fullerton was the Sustainable Transportation Expo, promoting eco-friendly travel like mass transit and bikes.

Keith Edmonds, a bike mechanic at 2 Wheeler Dealer in Brea, tunes up a student’s bike during the Sustainable Transportation Expo’s Bike Fest — one of the Earth Week events at Cal State Fullerton — on Thursday. (Photo by Nick Agro, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Attendees of the Sustainable Transportation Expo’s Bike Fest look over a map of Metrolink’s train lines throughout Southern California at Cal State Fullerton on Thursday. (Photo by Nick Agro, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Reporting on the interesting research and stimulating events at Cal State Fullerton is right up Wendy’s journalistic alley. A San Francisco native, Wendy earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Stanford and a master’s in journalism from UC Berkeley. After working in the news offices at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC San Francisco Medical Center, she became a business/technology reporter for the Puget Sound Business Journal and served as business editor at the Daily Breeze before moving to copy editing and working for the Seattle Times. She joined the Register in 2003, where she was a team leader on the copy desk until early 2017. She teaches copy editing at Chapman University part-time, has two grown children and lives in downtown Anaheim, where she can walk to yoga and good coffee.